Friday, October 10, 2014

Watching Netflix on Linux Without Ubuntu

Ubuntu has just announced that you can use Ubuntu to watch Netflix. They make it seem like Ubuntu is something unique and Ubuntu is the only way you can watch Netflix on Linux.

I use the Mageia distro of Linux, so that Ubuntu-specific mojo won't work for me.

Thankfully, it's not Ubuntu, but the beta version of the Chrome browser that has implemented DRM extensions for HTML5 video (along with a recent version of the NSS library, which Mageia has). All one need do is spoof the User Agent in Chrome to make Netflix think it's serving the video on a Windows platform and you are watching Netflix!